Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list inclu...
Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the Jan. 25 show:
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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: When I can start planting seeds for spring? How should I care for them?
A: To start seedlings, buy a tray that has pockets that you fill with soil individually, or ones that hold peat pucks and you put them in water to expand. They pretty much have everything you need to start a seedling, just keep them hydrated.
The other option is you buy a tray and seed starting mix — a light mix either with a coco coir or peat base that holds a very consistent moisture level.
A bottom heat mat is excellent to heat the soil temperature. You also need a dome or some people take some plastic wrap and use skewers to hold it up over the top.
A mist bottle and a watering can are also some things you’re going to need. Use the mist bottle to add humidity while germinating.
If you’re doing any perennials, you should be looking at getting those started right away, especially if you want them to bloom in the first year. Now is also the time to start things like onion seeds or leeks.
At the beginning of February, you can start petunia and hot pepper seeds, they take a really long time to germinate.
Wait until you just see seedlings pop out of the soil before taking a cover off to reduce the humidity and heat. If you leave a cover on too long you’re going to get stretching because there’s just too much warmth and it’s going to bolt.
Add grow lights for 12 hours a day as soon as you see any green. If you don’t have the light close enough the seedlings will stretch towards the light.
You get away with not using grow lights if you have a south facing window and are rotating your plants but a lot of times to get it close enough to the window cools the soil temperature and our daylight hours aren’t really long enough to provide enough light.
A combination of both grow lights and sunlight is ideal because the sunlight comes from all directions, whereas a grow light just comes from one. You can get silvering on the leaves if the light is too close to the plant — it will burn the leaf.
No air movement will lead to weaker plants that look limp or spindly, so adding a little bit of air movement from a fan or any airflow makes a big difference.
Transplant the seedlings into pots when the roots should hit the outside of the growing media. You should be able to pull a seedling out and see roots to the outside edge of the pot.
Don’t put the seedlings in too big of a pot to start off with or you’re just going to get these little fine roots going out to the side and the plant will take a really long time for the roots hit the edge.
Q: Can I use seed from tomatoes I grew last year to start plants?
A: Yes. To harvest the seeds cut the tomatoes open and take the seeds out. Make sure the tomatoes are an open pollinated heirloom variety for best results. If you use seed from a hybrid variety, you might not get the exact same tomato.
Scoop the seeds and the gel into a small container and keep them uncovered at room temperature. Add a little bit of water to get the gel off. In seven to 10 days they’ll probably be dry and then you can put them in an envelope to store them if you want to or get them going around mid-March.
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